Dancing, feasts and faith mark life on a vanishing island – Tuvalu photo essay

Music and laughter mix with the sound of waves crashing, a rhythm to life on a small atoll in the grip of the climate emergency

As the sun sets in Tuvalu, children climb and play on mountains of sand that have been dredged from the seafloor. Women walk in the ocean shallows searching for shells that have travelled up with the sands, to make necklaces and other decorative pieces.

Little by little Tuvalu, a tiny atoll in the Pacific Ocean, is being swallowed up as the ocean rises from under the once solid ground. This is the reality facing its 12,000 inhabitants who live in the shadow of possible climate change extinction, mostly as a result of rising sea levels.

A child’s teddy bear is part of the debris washed up along Tuvalu’s coastline